As a consumer, e.g. of heating oil, dental services and the like, as a pledgee to various causes, and the like, it has become common for householders and other postal patrons to receive in the mail a multiple ply assembly, the outermost constituent of which is a mailing envelope used by the addressor for getting the mailing envelope contents expeditiously into the hands of the addressee.
Usually, such a filled mailing envelope (or "mailer") will have instructions or other indications about its periphery as to the steps to be taken by the addressee for opening the outer envelope in order to gain access to the contents. Typically, access is gained by tearing-off one or more marginal strips along perforated lines.
The contents of such a mailer typically include an invoice, bill, statement, pledge form or the like (often one which may be separated into one section to send back with a remittance, e.g. a "remittance stub", and another section as a personal record of having been billed and having paid, e.g. a "record of payment stub"), and a pre-addressed, often pre-stamped or franked return envelope.
The task of making a requested payment is thus considerably simplified for the addressee: open the mailer, withdraw its contents, write a check for an indicated amount, separate the remittance and record of payment stubs from one another, place the check and remittance stub in the return envelope, seal the latter and drop it in the mail.
Many utilitarian designs of such mailer assemblies are commercially available. However, for some situations, including those brought on by recent changes in other fields, an ideal mailer assembly has heretofore been unavailable.
In particular, the U.S. Postal Service, and other mail handling, processing and delivering agencies and companies, as well as the businesses which receive remittances, are placing more and more automated code and address readers into use, e.g. optical character readers ("OCR's"). Some of this equipment, and associated equipment used for high-speed automated sorting of mail is susceptible to malfunction, or cannot be used, where the return envelopes have closure flaps which seal on the front face, or the front face is otherwise partly obscured, where the return envelopes or remittance stubs are of an odd size, and/or where the remitter folds his or her check, and/or the remittance stub, and/or staples these two items together before placing them in the return envelope.
In further particular, the businesses which send out such mailer assemblies often receive the components in two, three or more parts on which the business may need to print variable information (such as names, addresses, account numbers, itemizations, amounts, catagory designators, telephone numbers, and the like) in various places on difference ones of the parts, before these parts can be assembled into mailers and sent out. Typically, if all of the variable information is not printed on the various parts simultaneously in one pass through a printer, then it is printed in two different ways and/or on two different printers, one of which may be an impact-type of printer with or without a ribbon, and another of which may be a nonimpact-type printer, such as a computer-controlled ink jet-type printer. One or more patches of one or more faces of one or more parts of such business forms may be coated with a "carbon" or carbonless microencapsulated ink formulation so as to permit certain information applied to the form, or to a subassembly thereof, by directly impacting one part, to become printed on a surface of an underlying part instead of or in addition to its becoming printed on the directly impacted surface. Where multiple plies must be brought together from various printing stations and manifolded, interleaved, connected at specified sites and the like, usually an item of apparatus known as a collator is needed by the business. However some businesses which could otherwise become good customers for business forms of the general type under description find the purchase or lease of a collator too steep an expense to justify, and so their growth and modernization in this facit is held-back.
Moore Business Forms, Inc., the current assignee of the invention disclosed herein, presently commercially offers a business form product under the trademark Lasermate.TM. which is designed for use with both impact-type and nonimpact type continuous forms printers. That Lasermate.TM. form set current is provided in two parts. Part 1 has die-cut(s) and window patches(es), a full perimeter pattern of hot melt reheatable adhesive, and necessary perforations at top, bottom, left, and right to comply with end usage requirements. Part 2 has perforations which match with Part 1 and, as required, extra internal perforations which define, and allow removal of a particular sized remittance stub and payment record stub. Forms processing includes printing of variable data on Part 2 when used with non-impact printers, or Parts 1 and 2 if used with impact printers. Both parts are then collated, detached as individual sets, and sealed to provide a ready-to-mail piece. The product, as configured now, does not allow for a return envelope which would permit the end user to insert both remittance stub and check into the return envelope without folding.